Late night cries and comforts
by acrobaticwhistler
Summary: When Annabeth is in need of some comfort in the middle of the night, who better than Percy to give her some? Warning: Very fluffy Percabeth! Set on the Agro II


**A/N- Hey there! So, this VERY long oneshot is set on the ARGO II after Percy and Annabeth have their reunion, so everyone is on the ship to Rome :) WARNING- extremely fluffy**

**I would highly recommend listening to the song, "I can't make you love me" by Bon Iver.  
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**I wrote this listening to that c: Enjoy!  
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She slipped into the room, at the moment caring very little about the horrendous squeak that the floor boards emitted or the screech that the door let out while opening it and closing it.

Though she was slightly more thoughtful when it came to waking him, bending down so she could look in his eyes when they opened.

"_Percy_," She whispered, her breath slightly catching in her throat, the cries trying to wiggle through.

She forced them down.

"Wake _up_, _please_,-" and then she paused, hearing someone from the beds a few feet away stir, and she looked over her shoulder.

Thankfully, all of the other 3 boys in the room still seemed to be asleep, although she was pretty sure Jason had only moved his arm.

"Annabeth? Is that you?" She heard a groggy voice, _his _groggy, just-woken-up voice. A rush of warmness- relief, security, call it what you will,- flooded through her as she quickly put her gaze back on him again.

The only light in the room came from the 4 small windows that made a clear passage for the moon' s glow, but there was enough to see a glint of his eyes, the alarm that shown in them as he sat up, wide awake now.

"Annabeth, Is everything okay?" He started, "Is there a problem with the ship? Did you have a nightmare? Is there a monster? Is something wrong with the bathrooms? Are you sick? Do you... is it ….er, um... your 'time of the month'? Do you have cramps?-" A series of words, questions, concerns, fired from his lips, and not one of them was a complaint for waking him up at the early hours of 3 in the morning.

"No, Percy, I'm..." she started, felt the words scratching at her conscious, telling her, that no matter how foolish, to say them. "I'm just... lonely." It was the truth- part of it, anyway. She _would _like some comfort.

As oblivious as he usually used to be, he was almost an expert at catching when something was off now, even when she was trying to hide it, so immediately he knew she wasn't _just _lonely, "C'mere, tell me what's wrong." and he grabbed her arms.

She pulled her legs to her chest as soon as she was seated on his warm comforter, facing him.

"What's wrong?" Concern coated his soft voice, Percy pushed her stray gray streak from her eyes.

"I'm sure it'll be fine..." She wasn't sure at all.

Her eyes skittered towards the pillow of the bed closest to Percy's, the one which Frank was sleeping in, and could have sworn she had seen his eyes op-

"Annabeth," Percy's voice brought her back again, as it always does, "that's what you told me before we went into the labyrinth, and you weren't fine then."

She sighed, looking down at the blankets. The sigh she let out was heavy, one that successfully pulled out what she was so worried about.

"I got a visit...from my mother. In a dream."

She heard him suck in a breath; he and her mother were never on good terms.

But what he said surprised her, "That's good; she's speaking to you again." He exhaled.

She looked at him, once again a wave crashing down in her stomach- and not the good kind.

"No, Percy, it's not good...My mother...she, she talked to me about _you_." The anger bloomed again and climbed up her ribcage, clenching her heart making it beat with pure frustration, "Of _all the things_, she comes to rant to me about _you!_ " Annabeth couldn't help herself from clenching her fists. "She...she kept saying how you only think with your too big of a heart, and disregard your too small of a brain, and kept saying how I'd be the last straw before your... before your fatal flaw gets ripped from right under your feet and you break down-"

That's when he broke in, "Annabeth, they don't call my fatal flaw personal loyalty for nothing."

She looked down again, putting her forehead to his chest in defeat, "I know, I _know_ she's right, I just... it's so unfair for her to hate you because you put me in danger, meanwhile she gave me this stupid mark and this whole big role. I can't help but feel as if she's thrown me under the gray sister's cab again, and she blames _you _for it."

He was worried, she could tell when her eyes locked with his again.

"And yes, I know you were the one with the last big prophecy, _you _were the one who made the choice to save Olympus, but I was there the entire time, I was _still _caught in the middle. I was by your side. It was my mother who really started it all for me...when she lead me to Thalia and Luke so long ago. _She _did that... I..." Annabeth didn't know where to go from there, because in truth, this had little to do with Luke or his death, but she had a point to say she was in the middle, and how now she was falling back into a hole again.

It just all lead back to the war.

"I just... I hate this. I hate _all _of this. I hate war. I hate people dieing. I hate losing people. I hate fighting for my life! I hate having to feel as if every single move could make or break me, and... in reality, at this time, it totally can. It _can_, Percy, and my actions can break _other_ people too, people I care about, the people I love,..."

_You_, she wanted to say, but she didn't want to lose control and start to cry. Sure, she's cried in front of Percy before, but she didn't want to wake the others...

That's when she realized silent tears were already being caught by soft fingers, swiping them away.

"Wise Girl, please don't cry," Percy pleaded, and just for good measure, planted a kiss on her forehead. "We're going to make it through this, okay? We're going to be alright, I promise you-"

That was the thing, that was exactly the thing, he couldn't promise her _anything_. He couldn't promise she wouldn't die, or that he wouldn't die. He couldn't promise they would save the world again.

"But Percy, what if we're _not _alright? We're being tossed into _another _major war and my mom doesn't even process that I'm not _here _to do her bidding! I am _here _for _you! _She doesn't even understand that I _wont _be okay if... I wouldn't be able to go on... if you die-"

"Gods, Annabeth, don't say that, _please, _don't say that; I'm not-"

She pointed a finger at him, salty tears trailing down to her chin where they dropped onto her knees, "No! _You _don't! Don't tell me that you're not! When you heard your prophecy, you even said 'if I die, I die!' and you're not going to say you're not now, I don't want you to promise something you can't keep-"

"I know what I had said, and even if I was_ practically _destined to die, I didn't, did I? I can beat the odds again, right?"

She was silent, and for a moment, she thought, maybe they might make it through... but... there was one major problem.

"Percy," she sighed, "you're not invincible anymore. I'm not the only one who knows your mortal point; you don't _have _one anymore; you're just as vulnerable as everyone else is."

"You don't think I understand that?" He ran a hand through his hair, "I _know _I'm more vulnerable than I was in the battle of Manhattan, when we fought Kronos." His voice got softer, "But, gods, Annabeth, can't you just accept the fact that I'm worried more about your life rather than mine?"

"Percy-"

"No, Annabeth, you know you're thinking the same thing about me, you practically just said it.."

There was a long moment without anything being said. And finally, after Percy wordlessly offered with a nod, Annabeth made the silent decision to climb into his arms, curl up against his chest, and crumble. She drunk up how he was stroking her hair and not commenting on how she was getting his shirt wet- a crying girl is never going to be pretty with the tears, snot and all.

She let out a shaky sigh she had been holding for much too long,

"I just ...don't want to do this anymore." There, she said it. "I thought that the wars were going to be _over._ I guess... I guess I was just too gullible to think that nothing major could go wrong, I thought that maybe, just _maybe_, my luck had won out. And yet, here I am, yet here _we _are,-" No, it still wasn't it, "yet here _you _are, Percy," there we go. "Practically sailing into a war with only 6 other demigods to fight that is bound to get us all killed.-"

"Annabeth, please-"

"No, Percy. Here you are after you gave up being a _god_, gave up being your fathers lieutenant for _eternity, _gave up living in his_ underwater palace_,gave up a life of _immortality _just.. just so you can _die_. You gave it all up, every hero's dream. I hate how you can be so kind to everyone and do things for other people meanwhile the world seems to _hate _you-"

"Annabeth, listen to me." He looked down at her, using his thumb to run along the curve of her cheek, "I didn't give it all up for a fabulous life, I knew that a demigods life is never going to be _wonderful_. I mean, sure I thought mine would get better, and hey, in some ways it has."

She lifted her head,"How... how can you say that after all of this?"

"Well," he looked down at her with a goofy smile, "I got two amazing months as your boyfriend and _not _kidnapped by a goddess, and ...well, okay," he shrugged, his smile receding a bit, "then I _was _kidnapped by a goddess and had a six month long nap that I could have done without, and, um...sure," he furred his brow, " I had two months of being on the run from the Gorgon sisters, I didn't know exactly who I was, but," his smile started growing back, "at least I remembered _you_. Dimly, yeah, but I remembered how you looked, and how you laughed, and how you were extremely important to me. And here we are again. Together. Abject death, yeah, a little afraid, crying, and entering the biggest war of mankind, but you're still here, you're still mine.-" he paused, wincing, "eh, well, not _mine_, mine, considering neither you nor your mother would like it if I referred to you as an object that I possess, but...whatever. I gave up godhood for _you_. And this past year or so has been better than any amount of time I could have spent as a god, because I've always had you... despite a lot of it sucked."

Once again, it took a moment for Annabeth to reply.

"If that isn't the cheesiest thing you have every said to me, seaweed-brain, I don't know what is.." she smiled and sniffed.

How did he always manage to make her smile?

"Oh shut up. It cheered you up, didn't It?"

"Oh, so that was all said just to cheer me up?"

"If that's your way of asking if what I had said was true, then yeah, It was."

There he goes again, knowing exactly what is going on in her head, "And besides, I can't... I can't help but think that in the end maybe it'll all be worth it, you know?"

She wriggled around, so that her back was on his chest and her head was on his shoulder. He leaned against his headboard, putting his hands on hers, which we resting on her knees, her legs in between his bent ones.**  
**

She wiped away the rest of her tears, practically choking on a laugh.

"Actually, Percy, I have no idea what the heck you mean."

He cleared his throat.

"Well..I...um... you remember that city Camp Jupiter has?"

"The one with all the older demi-gods?"

"Yeah, them. I can't help but... want something like that."

"You mean, a town in Camp Half-Blood?" She couldn't help thinking, _where is as he going with this?_

"Exactly. A big place where we can grow up, go to college..."

She chuckled, "I didn't think of you one to be a scholar, Percy, but I get what you're saying. It_ would_ be nice..." she mused.

_A good place to study architecture, put models of Olympus..._

"Now, um, Annabeth, can I just tell you something?" He started to fiddle with his necklace, which he didn't do very often.

She raised an eyebrow, "shoot."

"Okay, um, I just.. when I would look at that city, I kept thinking about how nice it would be to, you know, grow old, have kids..."

"Percy..." she warned, "what, exactly, are you getting at?"

"Annabeth, I love you," her breath caught in her throat, "and I want us to get married."

And she suddenly felt as if she couldn't breath and wouldn't be able to for the rest of eternity.

Leave it to Percy to drop two major bombs at once.

After a couple years of her being frozen he spoke.

"Wow, I...I've rendered you speechless. That's...er... certainly a first." He chuckled nervously.

It was true, he really _had _rendered her completely speechless. But her brain was definitely not silent; _he loves me and he wants to get married. He loves me and wants to get married. helovesmeandwantstogetmarried helovesmeandwantsustogetma__rriedlovesmarried._

_ US. LOVES ME. MARRIAGE. _

She didn't know why she was so surprised at him loving her part, because she secretly wanted to say, "It's about time you admitted it," because, well, they both sort of knew, in an unspoken kind of way, that there was something deeper in their relationship.

Oh, but the marriage thing? She was still getting shivers from that.

But she couldn't say any of that, so instead she said, "You're kidding."

His immediate response was,"Would I kid about something like that?"

"Maybe." She replied, still trying to wrap her head around what he just said- And for a child of Athena, that should come easy with_ any_ topic... but love? Love was not logical, and therefore, not very easy.

"Well," he kissed her right temple, "I'm not kidding. I mean, I'm not planning on us getting married this young, but I want to later on, maybe when all of this is over. Just...er...think about it, okay, love?"

This knocked her out of her stupor. Not the kiss, the nickname. Okay, maybe partially the kiss.

She looked at him, "If you call me 'love' ever again, I'm not even going to consider marrying you, seaweed-brain."

He grinned, as if he had called her that just for that reaction, "Alright, I'll just keep it to Wise Girl, then."

She couldn't help smiling, "Good thinking," she paused, "and...I'm pretty sure I love you too."

"_Pretty _sure? What, you're not going to give me a straight up answer?" He rolled his eyes.

"I _did _say I wasn't going to make things easy for you, apparently you haven't gotten used to it."

"Eh, you just manage to surprise me sometimes."

She laughed, "Mhm, sure, kelp face."

Silence consumed them, but it was a content silence as Annabeth turned her head, closed her eyes and snuggled into his neck.

She suddenly realized how nice it felt to just... lay here like this, and maybe how in their future they could do this some more... And, how, because of him, everything always managed to be okay again...

"Percy..." she paused, opening her eyes, suddenly hesitant at what she wanted to say next.

"What is it?" He immediately saw in her face that something was up.

"It's just... I thought...can I... stay here tonight?" _I feel safer with you,_ she wanted to say, but she decided not to.

Something told her he already knew.

So, as the two slipped under the covers, content and neither worried, as he wrapped his arms around her and she told him he better not drool on her hair, and he apologized in advance for it, even though she secretly wouldn't care, the 5 other Demigods, two girls crouched outside the door and 3 boys who were silently communicating with their eyes to each other, all felt quite victorious about hearing the entire conversation and not getting nailed for it.

"Oh, and, Percy," Annabeth said with a yawn, and every sneaky Demigod's insides froze, "remind me tomorrow morning to skewer everyone else on this boat for listening in on our conversation."

He smiled, resting his head on her shoulder, "I was wondering when you were going to say that."

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**A/N- Hey again! So...did you like it? I'm sorry if either characters were OOC, but, well, Annabeth, like everyone, should be allowed to break sometimes, and she was sort of in that state of mind that makes her feel as if everything is totally going down the drain and there's nothing she could do to stop it... thus, Percy helps c: . Oh, no, they didn't have that whole teary conversation just because everyone else was listening, I seriously think they didn't even care at the moment and decided to let it happen. :)**


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